The practice of mixing and remixing media is no longer restricted to media professionals. Emerging technology of remixing digital media enables end-users to combine media elements new media products.
Further, new digital media data models, such as the MPEG-21 standard or enhanced ID3 tags, enable the binding of detailed descriptions or metadata about an item of digital media. Such data models can make it possible to determine what portions of a media item are contained in a given media item. Currently, such metadata is typically entered manually in ad hoc formats into whatever tags are available, such as, for example, ID3 tags in MP3 files. However, existing systems and software tools enable one to mix the sequences of digital data that represent the audiovisual information, but do not contemplate or make any attempt to systematically or reliably integrate the respective metadata of individual media portions that together comprise a new remixed or composite media item. Furthermore, although the new media products may be mixed together, it lacks the reliability to be associated with the rights, business rules, authorship, or accounting functionality needed to enable a marketplace in both composite media or its constituent portions. Thus, there lacks the methods and tools for combining such metadata associated with the media item when combining the media itself.